Conventional incandescent lights have been used widely and are available in a number of form factors. One commonly used form factor is known as MR-16, which customarily referred to a small, halogen reflector lamp. The MR-16 lamps are small and therefore are well suited to placement in small enclosures and often used for spot lighting. Due to the inefficiencies of incandescent light sources, however, there has been a substantial push to replace incandescent lamps with light emitting diode (LED) based lamps. This push has caused the creation of LED-based designs for MR16 lamps.
LED technology has rapidly advanced over the past 10 years. What originally was conceptual has progressed to the point that it can be applied in mass-produced applications. While LED technology has rapidly progressed, the rapid progression has created somewhat of a problem for conventional light fixture manufactures.
Typically, a light fixture designer has used a conventional, known light source and focused efforts on shaping the emitted light so as to provide the desired compromise between the total light output (efficiency) and the desired footprint of the emitted light. Issues like thermal management were peripheral. With LEDs, however, issues like changes in the light output over time, the potential need to convert to DC power, and the need for careful thermal management become much more significant. To further complicate this, LED technology continues to evolve at a rapid pace, making it difficult to design a fixture that directly integrates the LEDs into the fixture.
One known issue with LEDs is that it is important to keep the temperature of the LED cool enough so that the potential life of the LED can be maintained. Otherwise, the heat will cause the light output of the LED to quickly degrade and the LED will cease to provide the rated light output long before the LED would otherwise cease to function properly. Therefore, while the heat output of LEDs is not extreme, the relative sensitivity of the LED to the heat causes heat management to become a relatively important issue. Existing designs may not fully account for the heat generated, tend to provide relatively limited lumen output or tend to use expensive thermal management solutions that make the design of the LED replacement bulb extremely costly. Therefore, individuals would appreciate further improvements in LED light modules that could provide a cost effective solution to the issue of heat management.
Integration of LEDs directly into a light fixture structure results in the required disposal of the entire fixture upon the eventual failure of the light source, and/or its related electronic components. This is an undesirable result considered unsustainable in wide spread application of LED technology for general illumination.
It has thus been determined that a need exists for a module that addresses the thermal management issues and can be readily incorporated into a fixture.